Portraits of a Young Man

"Enough Ma, go away and let me finish my nap..."

Farm Help

We made a small amount of second cutting hay this afternoon. 

Farm Buddy badly needs the hay, but the other goal was to test out the baler after it failed so badly a few weeks ago. 

It needs more work.

It took nearly 4 hours to bale 42 bales as the twine keeps getting jammed up in one of the knotters.  Very frustrating, especially given the amount of repair work that has gone into this machine in the past year.

Fortunately, my trusty helper came out to lend a hand and moral support.  You can always count on a Border Collie...

We had unloading help as well...

This little lamb is getting extra goodies recently as she is not growing as well as her big brothers who keep pushing her away from the milk bar.  She is one of the set of triplets born this Spring.  The bottle-fed lamb (Lamby-Loo) has gotten so big that he is now, not only expecting his bottle, but stealing all his sister's milk as well.  We've never had problems with triplets in the past, but this ewe is not able to keep up with the demand of three babies.  You can really see the size difference between her and the lamb directly behind her.  That little bruiser is Flora, she certainly isn't missing any meals.

"Don't worry foolish humans, we'll have this unloaded lickety-split!"

"See, what's the big deal?  Haying is easy." *burp*

And when the "help" gets a little too unruly, its a Border Collie to the rescue again!

Crowd Work

This week's Sunday Stills challenge is, "...pics with more than 5 people or animals or even birds".  There are at least six turtles and a frog in this picture - a small crowd at the beach.  Can you find them all?

And a whole brigade of zombies....

You might be sorry you asked:)

The little white plant everyone asked about is called Indian Pipe, Ghost Plant or Corpse Plant, a name I've never been very fond of.  This is actually a fascinating, complex plant that is completely lacking In chlorophyll, the stuff that makes plants green.  Because of this, it can't make energy from sunlight like most plants do.  It is considered to be a parasitic plant that gets it's energy from a type of fungus which lives in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots, usually pine or beech.

That fungus attaches itself to the tree roots and gets its nutrients from the tree.  In return, it helps the tree fix nutrients out of the soil and absorb moisture.  Without it, pine trees would never get to be more than a few feet tall.  The Indian pipes grow out of the juncture of the fungus and the tree root and feed off of both or off of their decaying remains.

They are fairly scarce, but I always find at least a few each year.  They grow in the woods, in areas of very deep shade.  They aren't entirely without color though, the stems sometimes show a faint pink hue and the inside of the flower has pink and yellow dots.  The blooms are small, fragile and very short lived, although the plants are perennial.  If you pick one they start to turn black almost immediately.

This plant makes me think about the nature of prarsites.  I think sometimes that our understanding of parasites is too one dimensional.  We think of them as horrible, grotesque thieves, but in general, parasites don't want to harm thier hosts and often provide benefits.  It's usually only when the relationship becomes unbalanced somehow, that they cause harm.  Our animals suffer from them because we keep them in crowded environments and the animals can't move away from infested areas.  Parasites generally cause the most harm when they end up in hosts they aren't meant to be in.

These plants don't seem to cause any harm, at least none that I can see.  While they certainly do steal nutrients, like any other parasite, they also draw in pollinators that would otherwise never venture into deeply shadowed woods.  There are so few of these plants and they are spread so far apart that it is hard to imagine that a bumblebee would be satisfied by such a scant meal.  What else might that bee polinate once it's been drawn in by the Indian pipe?  I haven't a clue, but it makes me wonder.  Do other parasites provide benefits that we just don't recognize?  These plants are few and far between, they certainly aren't killing off their host.  Perhaps they are more symbiotic than we can see.  

What about other parasitic relationships?  If one of our animals collapses from heavy parasite burdens, it's fairly straight forward to figure out why.  Identifying what is out of balance in complex systems is a lot more difficult.  Often, we fail to recognize that a system even exists.

What system is out of balance that has allowed deer ticks to migrate into areas they never existed in before?   What used to keep them under control?  It's easy to see the big things...habitat changes/lose, increased deer population, changing weather, but what about the tiny things or things long gone.  Is there a correlation between the population of deer ticks and snow fleas?  Was it the migration of thousands of hungry Passenger Pigeons that kept them in check all those years ago and they have just taken this long to make it so far north? Did the Carolina Parakeet spread seeds from a fruit that shaded out the invasive barberry plants that came earlier and now shelter ticks? 

What about the evidence that suggests that the lack of parasitism is linked to an increase in allergies and other autoimmune disorders?  Is the little Ghost Plant a nasty thief or is it an integral part of a healthy forest?  I don't know, I doubt anyone really does, but it is always these littlest of things, such as Ghost Plants and snow fleas, that make me marvel at the intricacies of the world and fear the changes we are forcing on it.

Summer Colors

My old camera can't seem to focus up close anymore, but how often do you see bright yellow spiders, even if a bit blurry?

A Mighty Peep

Have you ever actually seen a peeper frog?

It's usually only in the Spring when any of us even think about them.  We hear their first tentative, little peeps and get excited and call our friends....Spring, it's Spring!  Within a few days, the little peeps have multiplied into the hundreds, thousands, millions until they are a shrill cacophony that seems to fill the whole world.

Surely the creatures who create such racket would be easy to find, but how often does anyone actually see a Peeper frog?  I've been trying to spot one for years, ever since I learned, in a long ago biology class, that they are tiny and live in trees.  They only come out into the ponds and swamps in the Spring to mate and lay eggs then disappear back into the leaves.

I was clearing fence this weekend and shoved a small sapling out of the way, I felt something land on my arm and just managed to take notice of it before brushing it away.  A miniscule peeper frog, no bigger than a pencil eraser....

Hard to believe that these guys get so loud I have to close my bedroom window to protect my ears.  This fellow sat for a moment, just long enough for a brief portrait, then launched himself back into the trees and once again disappeared.

Bye little guy, it was a pleasure to finally meet one of you.

Face Time

I can't remember how long its been since I managed to join in on Sunday Stills, but I managed today. I'm even on time!  What a novelty.

The challenge this week was faces, how could I miss that?